Projects to raise money

WASHINGTON, United States - An Iraq war veteran canceled his plan to crowdsource $1 billion to help President Donald Trump build a wall on the Mexico border Friday after raising only $20 million and drawing questions about his online activities. Triple-amputee veteran Brian Kolfage launched a GoFundMe account in December, quickly piling up donations as Trump was unable to get Congress to fund the wall -- leading to a now three-week-old partial shutdown of the government. But donations slowed and Kolfage said the group had concluded that the government won't be able to make use of them in the foreseeable future. In addition, Kolfage was put on the defensive late Thursday by a BuzzFeed News article that raised questions about his use of funds from a previous GoFundMe campaign, and alleged he ran an operation to fabricate fake news against liberal groups and politicians in order to generate traffic and profits from advertising. Kolfage said on his GoFundMe page that he will refund … [Read more...] about News
US vet cancels project to raise money for border wall

Triple-amputee veteran Brian Kolfage launched a GoFundMe account in December, quickly piling up donations as Trump was unable to get Congress to fund the wall -- leading to a now three-week-old partial shutdown of the government. But donations slowed and Kolfage said the group had concluded that the government won't be able to make use of them in the foreseeable future. In addition, Kolfage was put on the defensive late Thursday by a BuzzFeed News article that raised questions about his use of funds from a previous GoFundMe campaign, and alleged he ran an operation to fabricate fake news against liberal groups and politicians in order to generate traffic and profits from advertising. Kolfage said on his GoFundMe page that he will refund donations or, if donors agree, will put them toward a new company that will build sections of the wall itself on private property along the frontier. "Our highly experienced team is highly confident that we can complete significant segments of the … [Read more...] about US vet cancels project to raise money for border wall

By Patty Winsa Data Reporter Sun., Dec. 23, 2018 Mark Bonham is sitting in a restaurant at U of T’s Hart House as waiters set tables for the lunch crowd, with the discordant clinking of silverware and jazz playing in the background. A flat November light brightens the room with its dark wood tables and fireplace. An arched stone door is nearby, like one that might lead to an inner sanctum of some ancient church. This is where Bonham found a type of benevolence, although not the religious kind. The alumnus gave the university $200,000 nearly 20 years ago to establish an endowment for a course on LGBTQ issues — one of his first philanthropic gestures. Eventually, that turned into the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies after he donated another $1 million. The centre is the largest sexual diversity degree-granting centre in the world, with 350 undergraduate students and 25 master’s and PhD students, and the endowment is up to … [Read more...] about Mark Bonham calls himself a financial ‘punk.’ Why he went from raising hell to raising money for LGBTQ causes

caption Why aren’t investors jumping at Steve Schwarzman’s Saudi-backed infrastructure fund? source Brendan McDermid/Reuters Blackstone Group is struggling to raise money for its massive infrastructure fund in partnership with Saudi Arabia, according to The New York Times. The firm was targeting a $40 billion fund, half-backed by the Saudi government, but it has struggled to raise the other $20 billion in matching funds. To date, Blackstone has only raised $575 million of the match amount, less than 3% of what it was targeting. Private-equity giant Blackstone Group is struggling to raise money for the massive, Saudi-backed infrastructure fund that the firm unveiled last May, according to a report by Kate Kelly and Andrew Ross Sorkin in The New York Times. Blackstone unveiled the $40 billion fund for US infrastructure projects amid President Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia last … [Read more...] about Blackstone is struggling to raise money for the massive, Saudi-backed infrastructure fund it trumpeted last year

caption Raj Prakash getting his blood pressure checked by a community health worker. source Last Mile Health TED has launched the $250 million Audacious Project, an annual initiative to back world-changing ideas. Funders include The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Dalio Foundation, the Skoll Foundation, and Virgin Unite. Dr. Raj Panjabi, CEO of Last Mile Health, is one of the first recipients. Dr. Raj Panjabi is probably the last person to ever get the $1 million TED Prize – a sum of money given at the annual ideas conference to make someone’s big, world-changing wish a reality. It’s not that the prize given to Panjabi, a physician at Harvard Medical School and co-founder and CEO of Last Mile Health, a nonprofit that works with community health workers to expand healthcare access in remote areas, was somehow unsuccessful. If anything, it was too successful. Panjabi’s dreams … [Read more...] about TED has launched a $250 million project to model ‘what an IPO for the nonprofit world might look like’